XBox 360-O-Rama

Tuesday, The Wife had a doctor’s appointment. I work for a good company that allows me to take time off to be with my family, so, I went with her. After her doctor’s appointment, we went to Target to fill a prescription and get some odds and ends. The Wife loves going to the stores, and can spend hours looking at everything. I’m a targeted looker. I’ll hit electronics, and maybe wander around the grocery section. This trip was no exception.

As I’m wandering around the electronics section, I glance in the XBox 360 display and see a giant green box. They had a XBox 360 Core system in stock. Holy crap! I went and chased The Wife down and said I’d like to buy it, and wanted her input on it (being married, and all). She says “Of course” and so I go and get it. We also pick up a wireless controller and look for the hard drive (the two main items missing from the Core system). But, Target doesn’t have the hard drive… and the hard drive is required for backwards compatibility. So, we go to Meijer. No dice. We go to Wal-Mart, nope. We go to Circuit City and Best Buy, both busts. We call Fry’s, nada. We decide to go home and start researching.

We start hitting people’s websites. “Not in stock” “Item not available” “This item is no longer available.” I hit GameStop site and search for 20 miles and no one has them. I curse and shake my fist. On a whim, I try a 30 mile radius, and the GameStop in Shelbyville has “1-3” hard drives. AWESOME! I call them up… and they say they have one drive… and they’ll hold it for the 35 minutes to get there. We hop in the car.

We arrive, go in, and grab up the drive. As we’re checking out, the guy mentions that Wal-Mart next door had a bunch of drives. We get into the car and decide to jump over and see if we can get a second drive to sell on eBay. (They’re selling for about $30 over retail). We go in, go back to Electronics, and find the case. What do we find? 10 hard drives… and a XBox 360 Premium. What dumb luck. Two XBox 360’s in one day. We discuss it a bit and decide to buy the Premium, and return the hard drive and extra controller, and come out about $40 ahead of where we would have been…. So, for two hours on Tuesday, I had two XBox 360s in my possession.